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Determinants of child schooling progress in rural Ethiopia

Abstract:

Despite rapid expansion of primary enrollment in Ethiopia, many children continue to remain behind normal schooling progress. Current national figures indicate that nearly 45% of the children who enroll in grade one drop out school before completing grade five. In this paper the authors examined the main micro-level determinants of schooling progress of primary school-age (7-14 years old) children using data from rural Ethiopia. Using both demand side and supply side factors, estimation results of the Poisson regression provide various explanations for child education gap. The major demand side factors determining education gap include poverty, parental education, land and nonland asset ownership, village fixed effects and a child's demographic characteristics. On the supply side, differences in the availability of primary and junior schools in the village significantly explain variation in children's primary education achievement. The analysis also shows that the importance of these factors vary between boys and girls. The paper ends by discussing the required government
Interventions to stimulate child educational progression in rural areas of Ethiopia.